Insurance fraud is a moving target. Fraudsters are strategic about which channel they use at each stage, moving deliberately between web, mobile and contact centre to take whichever route offers the least resistance. A policy application using a synthetic identity might start online and end with a phone call. A bogus claim might be registered by phone and completed digitally. Viewed in isolation, however, none of it looks out of the ordinary.
But in our experience, the contact centre data repays closer attention. Buried in the calls there are often tell-tale signs that something is amiss.
The number behind the call
Fraudsters interact with contact centres more than many insurers realise, even when the fraud itself completes elsewhere.
They call to gather policyholder information, manipulate agents into making policy changes or to initiate payments. Each of those calls leaves a trace and the most valuable trace of all is the phone number.
When insurers treat phone numbers as risk identifiers, patterns emerge that are otherwise impossible to see: the same number linked to multiple policies, multiple identities, multiple claims.
Fraudsters may attempt to hide their caller ID, knowing this is often enough to bypass the controls most contact centres have in place, but when the true number behind an incoming call can be identified and checked that advantage disappears.
Based on an article by Jamie Melling published in Insurance Times
